Nearly two years ago, I was in the Chelsea Physic Garden for a function in January and, innocently enough, plucked a solitary mahogany-red hip from one of several thousand that were festooning a Rosa brunonii. For those of you unfamiliar with this eclectic little garden in the heart of London, I will describe the scene for you. An old and hunched Catalpa near the entrance has become the climbing frame for this interloper which, in the past, must have been planted at the base of the tree into which it was intended to scramble. Several limbs with cracked and fissured stems, each the thickness of an arm, rear up to lasso the host in a muscular ligature, and today, when you look up into the canopy, it is not the Catalpa that you see but an enormous weight of crisscrossing rose branches. I wonder how long the Catalpa has before the rose gets the upper hand, but it is a marvel in June, with its Milky Way of blossom. Each bunch of flower holds a mass of creamy white blooms and the hundreds of bunches perfume the lawns around the tree.

The blossom is short lived by today's rose standards, and you have only two to three weeks from start to finish but, like the best cloud formations, you have to make special time to take in the event. Several months later, you become aware of the rose again. By this time it is starting to fruit and, from here, the rose hips go from strength to strength, igniting the tree red among primrose autumn foliage. In January at the Physic Garden, the rose hips were still there, providing the pleasure I was seeking out on a dim winter's day.

The pocketed hip stayed put for a month, but not before I had played with the idea of several trees I know of garlanded with a second generation of this rose. So it was early March when I broke open the withered fruit and liberated the seed into a long tom of loam, top-dressed with some sharp grit to prevent it from rotting. I put it in a cold frame, covered with a small pane of glass to keep the squirrels and mice from rummaging, and forgot about it until I was clearing up in April, when I noticed that the seedlings had already germinated. I potted out a dozen seedlings in May and, by August, I was beginning to wonder if I had been foolhardy. The plants were striving to reach the sky, barbed against the world and pretty damn ready to get into it.

I have a particular fondness for the species climbing roses. I love their exuberance, and they bring another season or two to a garden and one that takes place way over your head, allowing you to get on with things at ground level. This fondness goes back to a Rosa multiflora that was planted on my parents' balcony at Hill Cottage. When we moved there it was threatening to take the rotting balcony down, but it was a delight in June when, for a week or so, it would festoon the balustrade. In the summer of 1976, we slept out as a family for six long weeks on a line of mattresses with this rose tickling our feet, and I remember watching the hips evolve. By the time we had to move back inside at the end of that long, hot summer, they were bright red and being feasted on by a frenzy of birds.

If you are talking about a rose to cover any unsightly object, R filipes 'Kiftsgate' always comes to mind, but it is a prime example of how you need to know what you are doing when you play with plants that are hard-wired to get the upper hand. The reason 'Kiftsgate' is good in trees is that it has evolved to scramble, ascend and conquer. Go to the garden of the same name and you will see 'Kiftsgate' filling a skyline some 60ft up. It has conquered several mature trees and shows no sign of settling into old age. This is a plant that I have only planted once, but in three years it had already put out growth that, if you got in its way, held you by the hair and threatened to take your eye out. I wince when people talk enthusiastically about their first 'Kiftsgate' and never recommend it unless clients feel like a tussle.

Vita Sackville-West was one of the great exponents of sending ramblers up into the fruit trees in her orchard, where they looked their most romantic among the long grass. But even Vita had some learning to do, as I understand this is one of the main reasons there are so few elderly apples in the orchard at Sissinghurst today. The trees have long since been overwhelmed by roses mismatched in vigour to their hosts. You need a fruit tree on a large rootstock, such as M25 or MM106, to support a vigorous species rambler, or you need a tree that has some headway to be able to support the extra weight.

When planting, you also need to set the rose a few feet from the tree's trunk, so that it is away from the immediate root zone of its host. Despite their muscle, the young plants do need a good start in life. A good trick is to dig out a hole the size of a bucket and then cut the bottom out of a large plastic pot so that the roots of the new rose can have at least a couple of seasons before they get out of the bottom. This way a tree's hungry roots will be kept at bay until the rose has made some good top growth. You should also plant so that the rose will grow into the light. Bear in mind that if you are planting into a tree, the rose will grow towards and flower where the light is.

Of the more moderately vigorous species, Rosa 'Wedding Day' is one of the first to bloom. Reaching a graceful 25ft, this powerfully scented rose has large, single ivory flowers that turn a wonderful dirty pink when they age, and good hips, too. R 'Francis E Lester' is even more prone to a pink blush and is of a similar size, but its flowers are semi-double. R 'Seagull' is less vigorous and more cottagey, with double white flowers - a sensible choice for a smaller garden. But if you have the room, I would go for the glossy-leaved R mulliganii with its massive sprays of cream flowers and crop of bloody hips in autumn. This can reach 35ft, as can R 'Bobbie James', another semi-double white. The doubles and semi-doubles tend to be longer flowering than the single-flowered roses, so R 'Paul's Himalayan Musk', which is blush pink, is a great addition to R 'Bobbie James' if you are wanting the longest possible season.

'La Mortola' is a hardier selection of R brunonii that has a bluish cast to the leaf and larger, lusher flowers, but I am holding out for my seedlings. Eleven were given away last year to friends and clients with a robust approach to gardening, but I kept one seedling that had a promising red flush to the leaf. As I write, it is straining to escape from its pot and should really be planted out this autumn. Do I dare let it loose in my own garden? I think not, but one thing's for sure:

I will find it a home where I will be able to take my time one day and sit under its vast dome of autumn hips, and marvel at its tenacity.